


The Little Prince

by PluffleCuff



Category: Le Petit Prince | The Little Prince (2015), Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Death, F/F, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-01-21
Packaged: 2018-09-19 00:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9409238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PluffleCuff/pseuds/PluffleCuff
Summary: Bed time stories aren't just for night time readings, they are memories, people, and homes. If you're lucky enough, they may even hold the stars.An alternate version of the Little Prince (2015)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Once or the Little Prince. 
> 
> This is far from the actual Little Prince idea. I twisted around because I like the general belief in the movie that when the Aviator was talking about believing in the stars and the little girl wanted proof- so when he was sick and basically she went off to get proof. Now whether or not it was to make sure he had his Little Prince to go back to or she just wanted general proof is unknown. Still the idea of it was sweet- so I threw this mess together with some Swan queen in the background and yeah. Here is my first little one shot. 
> 
> If you think this is good enough for more, well leave me a little prompt and hit the kudos button. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading! :)

Once upon a time, there was a little prince who flew asteroid to asteroid in search of a friend. He went leaps and bounds uncovering egotistical kings, star marketers, and men subservient to applause.They were all too big for their stars, and to that end- full of themselves. The Little Prince was humble in turn to their bows, applause, and even paper work. For he became the humblest of them all after unrooting all the deleterious weeds that threatened to encumber his asteroid. Until one fateful day he stumbled across a rose among the thorns, his rose. The foolishness of vanity and innocence quickly tainted the young love that sprouted- and for that the Little Prince fled. 

After wandering from asteroids and stars, the Little Prince found earth, and the desert. Where he met the Aviator who drew him his sheep- hidden in a box. All the sheep that were drawn were equally too sick, too gangly, or too old, or not a sheep at all. So hidden in the box the sheep stayed so it could simply be whatever the little boy wished. and in return the Prince uncovered both of them a truth to be told.

Hidden in a well was water, for that was all the Aviator needed, but the Little Prince needed to go home. He spent enough time aging through the flight between space, and the friends that he made. Surely it has been long enough.

“It is only through the heart that one can see rightly.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His name was Henry, the Little Prince. His Aviator was not a man draped in dirtied over-alls and an aged cap- it was a woman, dressed equally in expensive garb and certainly not wearing a hat. She didn’t fly a plane, or wasn’t even close to a pilot, and didn’t draw. Though, Henry was not lost, in fact it was the other way around, she was. The Little Prince was left on his planet, unaware of where his Aviator was- the only telling tale was a worn book left under his bed, dirtied by time and the ware of being completely misunderstood.

The book was his favorite, always being read at bedtime as long as he was showered and brushed his teeth neatly. If so he found himself curled up silenced by the repetitive tale.

“Once Upon A Time…” A pause. Why wasn’t she reading? “Ah, Hen. Don’t you want to read a different tale, you have all these books and it’s always this one.” Emma sighed, closing the book and setting it beside her.

“I love this book.” Henry whispered quietly, even he was a small bit of confused by the itching curling up in the back of his mind. It just made sense, The Little Prince was his bedtime story, like the rose was the Little Princes. 

“You can love other books, you know.” Ma consoled him as she leaned over to grab another book and replaced the empty spot with the Little Prince, before settling herself beside him again. “How about Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, hmm? Still a right amount of magic.” She teased him before flipping open the cover.

“Okay.”

“Now let’s try that again, Once Upon A Time…”

He slept fitfully that night, looking up at the glowing stars that was plastered on his ceiling that he begged Ma for after he was old enough to remember parts of the Little Prince. They were beginning to curl over as the adhesive began to age away from time, some days he would stand on his bed and fold over his blankets so he could reach on his tippy toes and push some of the edges down that were curling over to the point of falling off. If he tried hard enough, he would pretend that the warped edges would somehow curl intricately like the petals of a rose- and he would imagine that he could paint them a glossy red so at night he could have the luxury of a garden and a sky like the Little Prince.

Eventually he found himself pushing the blankets down as he reached over for his bookshelf and pressed his hands blindly across the various books until he felt a familiar worn spine of a book and pulled it out before falling back across his bed and hugging it to his chest tightly. The pages didn’t smell like the comfort he was looking for, and nor was it warm but he knew that the contents inside were. Because paper might burn, and be ruined by water, but his was enough as flesh and blood.

Ma told him when he was young that this book was the rose, and she was the plane. He laughed at her because that didn’t make sense, but she smiled sadly and said it was true anyways. He is 13 now, and he still doesn’t understand but soon he wants too, real soon. He wants to find the Aviator in the story because he isn’t lost, but she is- it’s always been coated over by being young and the fact that he’s forgotten before he even knew it. The price of growing up he remembers. Regardless there is no proof of the Aviator being out there. It hurts to be stuck between grown enough to forget but not brave enough to understand.

He doesn’t know what to think, but he sleeps anyways.

~~~~

Ma was awake, already geared up in her police uniform and gun belt. She was armed with a crumbled newspaper and a cup of coffee adorned with “#1 Mom” and a few paint smudges. Beside her was a vase of roses, lively compared to her slumped over form. Yet we have always seemed to have roses tucked neatly in vase, always replaced before they have withered completely. A permanent fixation in the house.

“Hey.”

 

She looked up, though her grin quickly quirking down as she saw the book cradled in his arm as Henry sat in the seat across from her. Ma lowered her paper as Henry sat the book on the table with a dull thud.

“What’s up?” She spoke up, taking a short drink of her coffee laying her tired eyes on him.

“I always chose to believe,” Henry began uncertaintly fingering at the edge of book “and now I want to know.” He whispered. It was time, there were no portraits anywhere just faint blurs and memories that were too fast to really catch.

Ma’s face paled immediately with a sigh. 

“She loved that book you know, you were her Little Prince and so when you also loved the book. I just let that be the place of her, and so you read it every night and suddenly I was putting stars in your room and it was full again.” She stopped and inhaled, “Because maybe you’d look at the portraits and not understand the woman behind it- but instead you believed in her. You believed and believed. You didn’t have to have the proof, just her.” Ma explained, grabbing the book and smoothing her hand over the cover.

“She was the Aviator.” 

“Your mom, Regina.” She confirmed.

The itching at the back of Henry’s head curled tighter at the leap of from forgetting to believing to having it be real. His mom was taken place into his bed time story, hung on his walls, always threading into his thoughts when he thought it was a simple infatuation with the story. It wasn’t the Prince who was lost, it was his mom.He went over great lands, of Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and maybe she couldn’t come home but he could. His Aviator flew the only place he couldn’t go, but he believed some day he could fly there too. Until then he grasped heavily at the map she left for him.

“You were the plane.” Henry stated, looking up at Ma as she stared silently at the book.

“She always loved to fly.”

“She loved you.” He answered, looking at the roses placed neatly in the vase.

Ma grabbed Henry's hand, pulling him over to her.“Yeah, and she loved you too. She’s out there, and not some belief.” 

“How do you know?”

“I have you.” Emma whispered fondly, plucking a rose from the vase and holding it between them.

She began again, “Besides, I have a secret to knowing.”

“What is it?” The Little Prince asked.

Emma placed her hand over his heart, the rose tucked neatly between them and whispered into his ear “It is only through the heart that one can see rightly.” Yes.

The Little Prince smiled because yes he could believe and know. Because as far as he was concerned as he touched the rose intertwined between them, this was proof. The living and a common love was true enough, and with that he could see. He could see that yes his mom had died, but she wasn’t far off- on a star Henry decides. Not a simple plastic one that fades with wear, but the ones hung in the sky, the everlasting ones. So if he could decide anything, it would be eternal.

Emma fumbled beside him, grasping wildly at the back of her pants, digging her hand into her pocket and pulling out her wallet. She leaned over and set the rose back in the vase before brandishing her wallet at him, “For you..” 

A wallet. Henry’s confused look caused her to shake her head as she opened her aged wallet, that was looked like it used to be a dark onyx but the crumbles in the side contrasted it as a more of a brown. Regardless, she rummaged through it, pushing aside old credit cards, and loose wads of money before tucking behind all the rest to a flimsy piece paper. She untucked it from the pile, a photograph. 

It was us. The woman was beautiful, her dark eyes and hair contrasting her bright smile, and tucked beside was him. Cherubic and dressed in a baby onesie. Ma was on the other side a vibrancy squishing them together. “Mom..” He whispered grabbing it from her hands.

“Yeah, uh. When you were real little she was kind of in charge of diaper duty, well really she was in charge of everything. I wasn’t much good at that stuff, but she was.” Emma chuckled sadly, looking down at the table.

Henry practically ignored her, still staring blindly at the woman in the picture. She was foreign, but yet somewhat familiar. Still, the woman holding him held something missing, the atmosphere was all wrong. “You can keep that, kid.” Emma whispered to him.

It’s his. He thought wildly, but it doesn’t feel like it. He looked over to the book, but there it could. Henry reached over and grabbed the book back, before flipping it over to the last page, it was damaged and so really it was illegible. Though really he just pretended his own endings, or Ma would just tell him, but this could be real. He tucked the photograph at the end of the page, and it blurred with the rest of the words. Looking up at the woman again, and yes this is familiar. the Aviator, his mom. Here his belief and proof would be, folded neatly behind a hard spined cover.

“I think that’s a much better ending, kid.”

“Yeah.” She got a home too.

 

The End.


End file.
